


all the number of the stars

by thereinafter



Category: Parasol Protectorate - Gail Carriger, Romancing the Inventor - Gail Carriger
Genre: Christmas, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Snow, Surprises, Yuletide, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21835891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereinafter/pseuds/thereinafter
Summary: On Christmas Eve, Genevieve surprises Imogene with a moonlight sleigh ride and at least one new invention.
Relationships: Genevieve Lefoux/Imogene Hale
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	all the number of the stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rinadoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinadoll/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! This is mainly based on RtI (which I love a lot), but hopefully doesn't clash with the overall series canon.

It was almost Christmas Eve morning, and frost covered the still-dark caravan windows in delicate, mathematical patterns. 

Genevieve got cold easily. Imogene was happy to know this, to be able to warm her with her country girl's constitution, fold up her chilly arms in hers and press her chest to Genevieve's spine under their blankets. She didn't even mind her cold feet, usually. Now that they were done with all that. 

The bedclothes smelled of her clean vanilla scent. Imogene breathed it in, nestled closer, and kissed the octopus tattoo beneath the short ends of her hair, tasting her skin. 

Genevieve stirred, with a sleepy, pleased sound, and turned in Imogene’s arms to embrace her, soft angles and cold callused hands. “Good morning,” Imogene whispered.

“Mmm,” said Genevieve, “it is.” Now that her dimples were presented, Imogene kissed them too, making her smile last longer.

"Do not forget, _choupinette_ , Alexia will be coming to collect you soon." Her half-awake voice was accented like heavy silk.

"Won't you come?" Imogene hadn’t forgotten, but was reluctant to leave these blankets. 

Ducking down against her warmth, Genevieve yawned and covered her mouth. "I believe she wants to help you find something for me. Naturally, I am not meant to know."

"Oh," said Imogene, perking up. Surprising her with gifts from London would be exciting, as second choices went.

Genevieve touched her face in a light caress, brushing her hair back and circling to her lips. Imogene kissed her chilly fingertips one at a time. 

If getting up was, as it seemed, required, she had better do it before it became more difficult. “I’ll make us tea,” she murmured.

She slid out of bed, trying not to let in the cold air, and pulled on a chemise. From the refuge of the well-stuffed top quilt, Genevieve watched, green eyes amused and a little hungry, even now.

Imogene built up the fire in the potbellied stove, put the kettle on, then sliced bread and fed it into the new toasting apparatus—which produced decent toast almost every time, hands-free, despite some dramatic failure states. A work in progress, they were calling it.

After the water boiled, she returned to bed to put a cup of tea into Genevieve's hand and an extra hot-water bottle next to her.

"I still do not deserve you," said her inventor, but without the edge it once had, wrapping graceful fingers around the cup. 

Imogene tucked the warm bottle into the blanket nest beside her. "Nonsense." She held out the plate of buttered toast and smiled when Genevieve crunched into a slice with a little French moan. "Someone has to make sure you eat and check your figures."

"Oh, I am tempted to keep you today." Genevieve stroked her bare shoulder where the chemise slipped down, then shook herself. "But no, you must go with Alexia. She _will_ arrive at the most awkward time and she won't be denied."

Imogene drank her own tea while choosing from the wardrobe, then climbed into flannel petticoat and stockings and did up her dress with Genevieve’s help. Not a moment too soon, for Lady Maccon descended upon them with what seemed like half the pack loping around the caravan, kicking up snow and rolling in the drifts.

They heard the familiar rapping of her parasol handle. “Imogene! My dear, are you ready?”

Imogene glanced at Genevieve, still in dishabille amid the blankets, then blew her a kiss and savored her returning smile before donning her cloak and slipping out the door.

“There you are!” One of the wolves bounded to Imogene’s side. “Mount up, dear, let’s be off before the sun catches us.” 

And with that, Alexia whisked her away at preternatural speed, racing across the snowy, sparkling countryside toward the morning bustle and smoke and fascinations of London.

* * *

Her patroness deposited her in the hands of pack clavigers with instructions to spend the daylight hours marching through intimidatingly elegant shops, loading her up with gifts for her and Genevieve. After Alexia rejoined her for a sumptuous late tea, Imogene was sleepy, head spinning, and glad to clamber back onto an obliging wolf at sundown for the journey home. 

The vast pink and gold wash of the sky shaded down to starry black while they ran, the wintry air nipping Imogene’s cheeks as she clung to her mount’s fur and gazed up. 

When a cloud revealed the moon, one of the pack sounded a joyous howl, and she shivered happily as trees and snow and landmarks whipped by.

At last, on the road outside the village, Alexia signaled the wolves to an unexpected halt. Ahead, a figure waited in a sleigh, drawn by an odd shape she couldn’t discern in the moonlight. 

“Here we are!” Alexia shouted. The figure waved an arm, the shape vented steam loudly, and Imogene recognized them. Her heart jumped just a little, as it had done ever since first sight of Genevieve, now bundled in her heavy frock coat and hat, and, of all things, driving the new automaton she hadn’t thought was finished. 

It wasn’t legally a mechanical, for complicated hairsplitting reasons, though it resembled a steam-powered quadruped. It looked bigger outside the potting shed and fully assembled. Imogene got down from the wolf’s back with her bag of parcels, no longer sleepy but hugely curious and excited to test it.

“I’ll leave you to her and … whatever that is. Don’t tell me.” Alexia waved back to Genevieve, who tipped her hat. “But you will come for Christmas dinner tomorrow. Both of you.” She pointed. “I insist. Good night!”

As the wolves and their lady melted back into the night, Imogene crossed the snowy road to the machine and hers.

“I borrowed this from the carriage house this afternoon,” Genevieve announced through her scarf, gesturing to the sleigh. “I doubt the hive will notice. I thought we might put her through her paces.” 

The automaton hissed from its boiler, as if to agree. Imogene laughed, her own breath rising in a pale cloud. “She’s running so well!”

“A credit to us both.”

Imogene handed her purchases up, adjusted her cloak, then took Genevieve’s hand to climb onto the seat, which was padded with warm rugs. Surely not for the vampires; she must have found them elsewhere. This evidence of a planned surprise, the considered details, warmed her further.

She pressed close to Genevieve, who fussed with the sheepskin lap robes, tucking them both in under their frosty, fleecy expanse. “I confess, I did enlist Alexia as a diversion. Forgive me.”

Imogene, a mass of anticipatory delight, would have forgiven her anything. 

“Would you like to try it?” She handed Imogene a control box trailing curly wires forward to the body of the machine. It was heavier than it looked, with a sliding switch and a dial one turned to set direction, as she remembered from the schematics. 

Imogene balanced it on the fleece over her knees. She put a mittened finger on the dial and watched the automaton's head swivel. There were bells on its harness. Bells! She impulsively kissed Genevieve’s cheek and made her laugh before nudging the switch forward. The automaton lurched into a jingling step.

“I hope,” said Genevieve, “that she will take us around the lake.” Her voice took on the light touch of steel that told her creations they had better work. “If not, this may become a midnight walk.” She slipped an arm around Imogene’s waist under the sheepskin and leaned in to watch her handle the controls.

Imogene sped it up, wobbled back and forth across the moonlit snow, then settled it into a rhythm like a horse’s trot. Genevieve made an approving sound at her shoulder.

For the sort of thing it was, the machine was impressively quiet, and only roused a few sleeping animals with its jingling and hisses as she drove it past the farms.

They turned off the main road onto a cart path toward the lake. Imogene was full of the brisk exhilaration of testing new science and being out after dark, like the racing on wolf-back had settled into her heart, while between the robes and rugs, her body was snug against Genevieve’s. 

The trees were deep black tangles on either side, and the stars and moon were very bright. When she asked, Genevieve even told her what she knew of the properties and relations of the heavenly bodies, punctuated with a dimpled smile behind the scarf every time she showed she was paying attention. Imogene didn’t think she could be happier.

“Astronomy is not my specialty,” she was saying, “but if it interests you, we shall find you a telescope.”

Imogene slid the control box toward her. “Could you? My fingers are getting cold, and I want to lie back and look up.”

Genevieve took her hands first, and breathed on them, and tucked them inside her coat and jacket against her shirt-front, until Imogene was quite warm again, all over, and assured her of it.

After granting Imogene a little bit more of a kiss, she resumed the controls. “They are glorious tonight, but the very best view is from the deck of an airship. I must take you up one day, no? After this bloody indenture.”

“Oh, yes,” sighed Imogene, snuggling contentedly down. She imagined gliding through the sky with clouds laid out before them like the banks of snow, the crackle of aether in the engines they built, free to steer anywhere by the stars. 

Then she decided the question of more happiness was open, but academic.

* * *

By the time they reached the field nearest the caravan, new snow had begun to fall, big flakes brushing and melting on Imogene’s face and decorating every surface in white.

They jingled efficiently to a stop between the mounds that were the vegetable and flower beds. After Imogene climbed out with her parcels, Genevieve followed and powered the automaton down. “That’s a very good girl,” she muttered, stroking frost from its mechanism. Imogene gave it a pat too, and helped her cover the entire equipage with canvas tarpaulins.

As they finished, Genevieve held up a hand. “There is another small thing.” She bent down, dug a little, and came up with another switch box. 

Glancing at Imogene, she flipped the lever. With a sizzling snap and a rather pleasant charged smell, all around, hundreds of tiny lights flickered into life, set in the trees and hovering in midair, illuminating their little home in the falling snow.

Imogene gasped and turned to see them, her skirts spinning out in circles, agape at the beauty of it. Like she'd brought the constellations down for Christmas. If anyone could.

“They are powered by ambient aether,” Genevieve was saying. “I spent much of today on a ladder, placing them, and before that many stray moments designing. I am so pleased they all have lit, there were just a few tricky equations—”

“I love them!” Dropping the bag, she threw her arms around Genevieve, barely avoiding toppling her back into the snow. 

Genevieve caught her, accepting her kisses with a smile Imogene could feel. “The thought came to me watching you light candles,” she murmured. “They are only a trifle, of course, but the countess cannot have them.” Then she kissed back in a fierce way that still took Imogene’s breath. 

When she regained it, and could see beyond green eyes, she realized Genevieve's hat had slipped awry, her hair was dotted with snow, and her ears flushed with cold. Imogene cupped her hands over them to prolong the kiss, then whispered, “I love _you_ , and you’re freezing. Come inside.”

She retrieved the parcels and pulled her by the hand, through the aether-stars, to the door. 

Inside, more shone on the caravan ceiling and through the windows. “Oh, don’t light the lamps,” said Imogene, “it’s too beautiful this way.”

“I quite agree.” Genevieve knocked snow from her hat and hung it on the peg, then emerged from her coat and jacket, a trim figure in shirtsleeves, all dimples and interesting shadows. 

She took Imogene’s bag, and Imogene took hold of her waistcoat lapels. It was a newer one for evening, unstained by work. 

“Lady Maccon helped me find you a few things. But you can’t open _them_ until tomorrow.” She grinned pertly, knowing the effect it usually had.

Genevieve said something she hadn’t yet learned in French that sounded very promising. “In that case—” She set the bag on the table and slipped Imogene’s cloak off her shoulders, sliding it down her back with both hands. “I have other gifts for you, _choupinette_.”

Imogene made a mental note to ask for a translation as she helped unwrap herself on the way across the caravan, under the warm starry scatter of her lights. She had decided her curiosity might be endless, but Genevieve always, always answered it.


End file.
